Journal
NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
Volume 7, Issue 6, Pages 443-+Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3298
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation through the Network for Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM) under NSF [GEO-1240507]
- Penn State Center for Climate Risk Management
- European Research Council under the European Community's program 'Ideas' (ERC-StG/ERC grant) [336703]
- Directorate For Geosciences [1240507] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a key tool in climate policy. The SCC expresses in monetary terms the social impact of the emission of a ton of CO2 in a given year. The SCC is calculated using a 'social welfare function' (SWF): a method for assessing social welfare. The dominant SWF in climate policy is the discounted-utilitarian SWF. Individuals' well-being numbers (utilities) are summed, and the values for later generations are reduced ('discounted'). This SWF has been criticized for ignoring the distribution of well-being and including an arbitrary time preference. Here, we use a 'prioritarian' SWF, with no time discount, to calculate the SCC. This SWF gives extra weight ('priority') to worse-off individuals. Prioritarianism is a well-developed concept in ethics and welfare economics, but has been rarely used in climate scholarship. We find substantial differences between the discounted-utilitarian and non-discounted prioritarian SCCs.
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